Tourniquet
by fufulupin
Summary: There is a tragic event in the life of the Baudelaires (go figure). My summaries suck, but I'm hoping this doesn't. PG13 for violence, light language and tragic events


A/N: In the midst of the 2nd book! Yes, I think I'll just torture you all (or, if you like my work, graciously bestow upon you) with at least one fic per book as I go along. This particular one breaks the general trend I have created for myself as the writer of "reassurance in the night" fics, but remains steady in the general "depression" trend. It also keeps with my ability to cheerfully spin out tales about the elder two Baudelaires while conveniently…forgetting the one with the four teeth. Don't get me wrong folks, I love Sunny in the books and she's adorable in the movie from what I can see. However…she worked a bit better for me when…well…you'll see. Let's just say the story goes a bit more smoothly when I do not have to wrack my brains looking for a plotline for the smallest orphan. –apologetic expression- Sorry, folks. Try to enjoy it despite the depression.

Disclaimer: This is totally not mine. Hence the whole "fanfiction" part. Yeah. The song is also not mine, it belongs to Evanescence. I just have this crazy thing in my head where, every time I hear this song (or any song by this band, really), I picture Violet singing it. It's creepy, I wish it would stop, but it also helped spawn this, so…be thankful.

Death is perhaps the most terrible thing in the world. Life seems so full and long and _eternal_ until the day comes when it is ripped out from beneath you, hurling you into the dark abyss of depression.

This was what Klaus Baudelaire discovered when he was twelve years old and his parents (not to mention his home and, by extent, his life) were destroyed in a terrible fire. Ever since then, his world had been a mass of fear and chaos and sorrow. He went from place to place along with his one older sister and one younger, trying to escape their fortune-hunting Count Olaf.

They had felt rather safe too, up until just recently. For once, they thought Olaf wouldn't follow them and they would finally be able to live in peace.

A gunshot changed all that.

The blood froze in Klaus' now thirteen-year-old veins. He whirled in time to catch a bullet in the shoulder, though I suppose you could say he was lucky because it only grazed his flesh, leaving a deep, painful gash. Flames danced before his vision and he hit his knees.

His first thought was not of his own injury, however, but of his two sisters. Violet was not with him; she was safe in the small cave of a shack the orphans had been living in. Sunny on the other hand…little Sunny…

Klaus' heart stopped. His baby sister was on the ground, unmoving, an expression of pure terror frozen on her innocent face as crimson blood blossomed from a spot in the direct center of her tiny chest.

An animal scream ripped from his throat and the young man—for at this moment, he was a boy no longer—hurled himself at the murderer. He did not recognize the man and did not particularly care to. All he knew was the gun in this man's hand had ended a tiny child's life.

Before Klaus could return the favor, thick hands wrapped around both of his arms, squeezing tightly enough to send waves of pain through the teen's wounded shoulder. Klaus bucked against his captor, but the man (also unfamiliar; Olaf must have hired new help since the last time the orphans had run into him) held fast.

The killer bared his teeth nastily in what Klaus assumed was a smile. "Take the boy to his sister…the one who is still breathing."

"No!" Klaus shouted. "You do not have her!"

"Believe what you will," the man answered with a careless shrug, clearly thinking Klaus had lost his mind. Knowing he was defeated (for he could never hope to fight off one fully-grown male, let alone two), the middle Baudelaire orphan allowed his shoulders to sag as the man continued, "If we are lucky, they will die of starvation before we have to worry anything more about them."

"Ay," the larger of the two consented, turning and hauling the limp Klaus along. The young man closed his eyes to block out the image of his sister, glassy eyes forever blank…

"Git in!" his captor growled, shoving Klaus through a doorway. Looking up, the boy smirked wryly to himself. Olaf always did have a weakness for towers.

Up the stairs they went, the older man going on about things Klaus had absolutely no interest in hearing. Namely, about his older sister.

"A pretty one, that. Olaf won't have her; he's grown tired of you all. Perhaps, however, he will allow me to take amusement from your sister….Violet, was her name? Her spirit is tough, according to the Count, but that won't last long. If there's one thing I'm talented at, it's breaking the spirits of pretty young things—oof!"

Furious, Klaus had turned and rammed his good shoulder hard into the man's ribs. His captor caught him around the throat and shoved him back into a wall, cracking the thin boy's head against the stone. Klaus' eyes rolled and he groaned. The man, irate, backhanded him.

"You will learn your place before you die," he promised, resuming the dragging of the orphan. Upon reaching a heavy iron door, he unlocked it and threw Klaus unmercifully in.

"Enjoy your last day," he sneered before slamming the door shut. Klaus turned his throbbing cheek against the cold stone floor and spat his own blood, groaning again.

"Klaus?" His sister was seated in the shadows on what appeared to be the only bed in the room—more of a moth-ridden mattress, really. Quite similar to the furnishings of their sleeping chamber at Count Olaf's disgusting home. Her hair was tied up with a ribbon and she was building something to help them escape, he knew, but you couldn't bring himself to care very much. All his emotions were focused on the singular word reverberating around his head.

_Sunny…Sunny…Sunny…Sunny…_

"Sunny," he mumbled. "God…Sunny…"

"Klaus, what happened?" Violet's voice was calm, but her shadowed face betrayed her horror. "Where is she?"

"She's gone. I let her go…it's all my fault," he croaked, forcing himself to his feet so suddenly that his vision rocked horribly. He leaned his forehead against the nearest wall to steady himself, then pulled back a fist and slammed it, full-force, into the stone.

"Dead!" he yelled, pounding the coarse surface once, twice, again and again as he chanted. "Dead! Dead! Dead! She's dead!"

Violet didn't say a word. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her slump on the singular bed, dropping whatever it was she had invented with a clunking sound.

His knuckles were bleeding, so he switched hands and slammed his left fist into the way, repeating his horrific mantra. "Dead, dead, dead, dead—"

"Stop!" Violet shrieked very suddenly. She leapt to her feet and grabbed her brother around the shoulder in order to haul him back.

He looked at her with dull eyes and she repeated softly, "Stop it. That won't help."

"You're digging into my bullet wound," he replied absently with an ugly, humorless smile. Blinking, she withdrew her fingers and stared at the blood.

"Klaus, you've been shot!"

"Obviously." He allowed himself to be pulled to the bed before answering beyond that one sarcastic comment. "They shot her, Violet. They never even gave her a chance."

"They shot you too, so sit still for a moment," she retorted firmly, looking around the mostly-empty room. Her tears were gone for a time, replaced with a determined focus on patching up her younger brother.

Before Klaus could say a thing, she had ripped several strips from the sheets and was tying them around his shoulder and hands. He tried to protest, but she only shook her head.

"We won't be here long enough to need to bed and we won't be able to do anything at all if you are bleeding to death. Hold _still_."

"Violet…"

"Klaus, just…don't fight me on this, okay? I've been working since they put me in here, I've made another grappling hook that will reach to that tree just outside, we can climb down—"

"Violet!" Standing sharply, Klaus trembled and pulled away to sit as far away from his sister as possible. "Violet, I don't deserve to live," he continued furiously. "Not after what I did. I let Sunny die and now I need to pay the same price. It's only fair."

"Fair?" She looked utterly horrified. "Klaus, nothing in our lives is fair. You letting yourself die when you could be working to avenge Sunny's death is not _fair_." She came close to her brother and sat down and he pressed back, into the corner, trying to escape her and her stupid logic.

"You should escape," he replied, feeling completely numb. "But I won't go."

"Then I won't either," she answered stubbornly. "Don't you see? All we have now is each other. Without one, there is no other. So, if you choose the coward's path, to lunge at Death with open arms, then fine. So will I." And she stared at him, challenging him to argue with her.

He wanted to continue the debate, but the knowledge that she was right, and that she wouldn't leave him, lead him to only one answer. He began to cry, freely and without shame, and when she put her arms around him, he didn't fight her.

She opened her mouth and he cringed, expecting a lecture of some kind or, worse, a patronizing speech. To his surprise, however, she began to sing.

_I tried to kill the pain  
but only brought more  
I lay dying  
and I'm pouring crimson regret and betrayal  
I'm dying, praying, bleeding and screaming  
am I too lost to be saved  
am I too lost? _

my God my tourniquet  
return to me salvation  
my God my tourniquet  
return to me salvation

do you remember me  
lost for so long  
will you be on the other side  
or will you forget me  
I'm dying, praying, bleeding and screaming  
am I too lost to be saved  
am I too lost?

my God my tourniquet  
return to me salvation  
my God my tourniquet  
return to me salvation

I want to die

my God my tourniquet  
return to me salvation  
my God my tourniquet  
return to me salvation

my wounds cry for the grave  
my soul cries for deliverance  
will I be denied Christ  
tourniquet  
my suicide

It was a song that their mother had sung, many years ago, when her children were restless, and Violet's voice was like a ghost from the not-so-distant past, making him sob all the harder. The haunting lyrics, coupled with his sister's angel voice, so similar to their mother's, had reduced him to a mere child; ironic, seeing as he had viewed himself as an adult only half an hour before.

Finally, after a near eternity, there were no tears left in either of them and the sun was nearly set. Wiping painfully dry eyes, Klaus turned his attention to the small window. Violet went to the bed and retrieved her invention.

He wasn't sure how he managed to climb the entire way down the tree, not with his blank vision and rubbery limbs, but sooner than he would have expected, Klaus' feet were on the ground and Violet was behind him, shoving him directly in the spine to force him into movement.

He ran blindly, feeling his sister at his heels. "Where are we going?" he asked, terrified of speaking above a hoarse whisper.

"Away," was Violet's only terse reply.

They passed the place of Sunny's death and even in the darkness, Klaus could see blood on the ground: his own and the baby's. Tears threatened to come to his eyes again and he fought them as best as he could as they reached the crumpled body, still lying in the dirt. Without even slowing to think, he bent and lifted his sister into his arms.

Violet looked sharply at him and nodded slightly, a signal that his was a good idea. Much better to take the bundle that had once been an energetic, biting baby and bury it properly than to leave it to be disfigured by Olaf's men.

Running in the dark is a difficult enough task when one is not holding a body and looking over one's shoulder in panic, but Klaus somehow managed to keep his footing until the pair had reached the nearest docks.

"Now what?" Klaus panted. "Do you want to steal a ship or something?"

"The proper term would be 'commandeer'," she responded, hurriedly tying her hair back. "But no, we're not. That would be illegal."

"Surely we aren't going to _build_ a boat," he said softly, watching his sister go into inventor-mode.

"No, of course not." Violet turned in a slow circle, and then snatched several thick planks of wood from a pile. "There isn't nearly enough time for something like that. However, we do have a ticket."

"A ticket? What—oh, no." Realization dawned on his face and Klaus clutched the bundle closer to his chest. "Violet, no!"

She frowned. "I don't like the idea any better than you do, but it's all we've got."

"What do you plan to do?" he demanded. "Give her up?"

"What? No! Are you kidding?" A tense smile touched the corners of her lips. "We'll simply tell the nearest fisherman the truth: our young sister contracted a deadly virus while we were vacationing and now we must return her to our home and parents before coming back to boarding school in a few days. And, should they ask about money, we will tell them the truth about that as well."

"Which is…?"  
"We have none," she answered simply. "Here, help me."

They spent the next twenty minutes constructing a makeshift coffin with the wood planks and some sharp bits of metal that happened to be lying around. The "nails" were pounded methodically in with large rocks.

Klaus tried to keep up a steady flow of conversation to distract himself, but Violet refused to respond. After several attempts to lure her into discussion, he realized that she was paying her own special tribute to Sunny with her silence and he fell silent as well.

When the coffin was complete, the siblings tenderly lowered Sunny into it and nailed it shut. Then they lifted it together and carried it onto the docks.

A red-faced man with a very large mustache and kindly eyes called out, "Oy! Children! Where are you going with that box?"

Violet pasted on her saddest expression (which wasn't very difficult, given the circumstances) and said quietly, "Sir, please. Our sister has just died and she was very young, only a toddler. We need to bring her home to our parents, but we haven't more than a few coins."

Klaus remained silent; the lie, though half-true, was still rather elaborate and he had no wish to ruin his sister's brilliantly morbid plan. When the sailor looked questioningly at the boy, he only nodded and allowed some of the tears he'd been holding in to drop slowly down his cheek. The man's grandfatherly face turned even warmer and he reached out to them.

"I'll carry tha' for you," he offered sympathetically, but Violet shook her head.

"Please, sir," she repeated sorrowfully. "I'd really feel better if I could keep her near me. You see, I was…away when she died and I never really got to say goodbye." This was mostly true; also, Violet had learned to be wary of all strangers and did not at all like the idea of letting her sister's body out of her sight.

The sailor nodded and said gruffly, as though he was battling tears of his own, "You're welcome to stay on me ship. Where's home?"

Violet thought very fast. "It's just across the lake. Simple city, really. Uh…"

Klaus cursed himself silently for not thinking up something so important as a name, but the man was nodding again.

"I know the one. Don' you worry your pretty head about it; I'll get you there in a couple of hours. By sunrise, likely."

"Thank you." Violet bowed her head and Klaus did the same before following her up the walkway to the sailor's small boat.

"Go downstairs!" the man called after them. "Second door on the right is empty. You can stay there 'till we reach port, saavy?"

Klaus nodded and the two slipped down to the lower deck of the ship. He wiped his brow with one hand, then quickly steadied the light carton again.

"That was close," he muttered as they entered the room and carefully set Sunny's final resting place on the bed. "We could've gotten caught, Violet."

She wasn't listening. Having taken the ribbon out of her hair, she seemed to have let go of her courage and was now sobbing hysterically in a chair, arms wrapped around herself. Klaus bit his lip.

"Violet…"

"I should have been there," she whispered, not meeting his eyes. "I shouldn't have been thinking about my stupid inventions…"

"Violet, your inventions are the only reason we're here now and not in that damn tower waiting for an executioner," he replied awkwardly. She looked up at the swear word—Klaus rarely cursed—then back at the floor. He sighed.

"Listen, we can't do anything to change what happened. All we can do is hopefully…hopefully build a new life for ourselves. One that Sunny would have loved. She deserves it. She…she would want that for us."

Her tears continued, but he thought he saw her nod. Unsure of what to do, he leaned back against the wall and let his eyes burn, unseeing, into the coffin.

A/N: Ook, that was the end of chapter one. Should this massively depressing story gain happy reviews, I will continue with the second installment I have planned. –grins- I know so many of you like to type "write more soon" in response to my one-shots, so I'm giving you a chapter tale today. Love me for it. Review, and the second chapter should appear soon.


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